


Five Disadvantages of Living Next Door to a Mad Scientist (and One Advantage)

by Silex



Category: Original Work
Genre: 5+1 Things, Comic Book Science, Gardens & Gardening, Gen, Mad Science, Slice of Life, Small Towns, Superheroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26920984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: Sarah Mires, formerly Aphelion the Solar Knight, was the start of her latest adventure – retirement. Unfortunately, between local wildlife and the neighborhood homeowners association, small town life isn't quite what she expected, and that was before she met her neighbor...
Relationships: Retired Superheroine & Female Mad Scientist
Comments: 22
Kudos: 15
Collections: Canon Ball 2020





	1. Disadvantage One: Gardening Killbots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Guinevak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guinevak/gifts).



The little house wasn’t much to look at, but for Sarah Mires, formerly Aphelion the Solar Knight, it was the start of her latest adventure – retirement. Her former sidekick had taken up the sword and title of Solar Knight and she was ready to move on, not to bigger and better things, but to smaller and more sedate things. As exciting as the life of a superhero was, she was ready for a change, not just of costume, but of everything.

The pace of life in suburbia and the challenge of renovating an old, but still nice house, was a step down from saving the world, and something she was ready for. She’d never intended to be a hero for life, like so many other members of the various heroic organizations she’d worked with, or been a part of, only having planned to hold onto the sword she’d found as a grad student at that archeological dig until she could find someone to take it that knew what they were doing. Then the Molemen had attacked and she’d found herself pulled into the fray. After that it had been Dr. Disaster nearly sinking Hawaii, followed by an incursion from the shadow dimension, then being at the wrong place at the right time to stop the thieves at a museum, and on and on until she knew what she was doing as Aphelion.

And now she wasn’t, she was just Sarah Mires, a middle aged first time homeowner trying her hand at refinishing the dining room floor and replacing loose gutters.

It wasn’t glamorous, if all went well her picture wouldn’t be in the papers for it and it wasn’t exactly dangerous as long as she made sure the ladder was steady when she was up on the roof, but she enjoyed it.

She especially liked the fact that the only attention she got for doing it was from her neighbors.

The young couple to the right of her house offered her any help that she needed and invited her over for beers one Saturday night. They were nice enough, if a bit odd with the hours they kept, both working the nightshift at their respective jobs. They never caused any disruptions though, at least none that left their yard.

Her other neighbor was a mystery, the woman having gone out of town for the season. The young couple had said that she was a snowbird, which for a moment made Sarah think of one of her former coworkers, an eagle winged and headed young man with powers granted by the north wind. There were a few heroes and skeptical reporters who worried that Snowbird was part of the vanguard of an alien invasion, but he was earnest in his heroism and Sarah had been willing to vouch for him on numerous occasions.

Of course her absent neighbors probably weren’t from his home world, they were just spending the winter somewhere warmer.

Life in the suburbs was a far cry from the life she’d left behind, but she wasn’t going to complain, not when her new house gave her plenty to keep her busy.

A month into working on the house, the weather finally having gotten nice enough that she was able to move from indoor projects to replacing the cracked skylight in the upstairs bathroom, she saw something that made her freeze and reach for the enchanted sword that had been at her side for so long.

One of Vincent Victory’s killbots was standing in her snowbird neighbor’s backyard looking as out of place as a construct of curved black metal and deflection angles could surrounded by a white picket fence.

Ever since the criminal genius had managed to get them mass-produced they’d been a staple for every villain looking to take over a city or assassinate a hero.

It turned to her, waved the wicked looking bladed implement it was wielding at her and then went back to rototilling the dirt of the backyard because that’s what it was doing – using a rotiller to turn over the soil in what was obviously a garden plot.

This went on for several minutes until a woman about Sarah’s age, maybe a little younger, but certainly no more than a year or two older, ran out of the house. She had unruly gunmetal grey hair and glasses too large and too thick framing her wild eyes.

“Look out!” Sarah warned, wondering if there was a way to defeat a killbot without her powers. She’d picked this neighborhood based on its distance from the patrol of the nearest of her former coworkers. Usually that meant a quiet town, but in this case it meant that she was on her own.

Her neighbor, blissfully unaware that mechanized death was in her backyard, waved at Sarah, “You must be the new neighbor! It’s nice to meet you!”

The killbot stopped what it was doing, its head swiveling towards the woman.

Sarah had seconds to act before the ‘bot would make its move.

“Prudence, why didn’t you say something to me? I could have made more coffee,” the woman looked conspiratorially at Sarah, “You do like coffee, don’t you?”

The killbot let out a trill that rose and fell like an old cable modem connecting, the only tell that a killbot was powering up its lasers.

“What do you mean you didn’t notice her?” the neighbor huffed, “Do I need to recalibrate your visual sensors? You see three hundred and sixty degrees from ultraviolet down into infrared, how didn’t you see her up on the roof?”

The ‘bot gave an unmistakable shrug.

“She might have been stuck up there and here you are, just gardening away without a care in the world,” Sarah’s neighbor frowned, hands on her hips, “What would happen then?”

“I’m not stuck,” Sarah offered, not sure of who the woman was talking to, undoubtedly the mysterious Prudence who was nowhere in sight, or why the killbot was just standing there.

“That’s good,” her neighbor said genuinely, “Because that would be a terrible introduction. This is a better one though – I’m Vivian and this is my partner Prudence. I reprogrammed them myself. We’re both delighted to meet you.”

Vivian gestured proudly to the killbot, which raised and lowered its shoulders in mute, but recognizable facsimile of a long suffering sigh.

“I’m Sarah,” she replied, trying to place who the woman was. By that time it was clear that the killbot belonged to her, but she wasn’t recognizable as any villain that Sarah had ever crossed paths with. Perhaps she was someone new, looking to start a career of evil, but Vivian seemed past that point in life, not that Sarah was judging. It was never too late to start something new, what she was doing was proof of that, but still, global domination was a young man’s game.

And there she was judging again.

There were more and more women breaking into the field of mad science all the time. In fact, her last three arch nemesises had been women. Well, one of them had been a sixth-dimensional being of conceptual logic, but that being of conceptual logic called itself Miss Sterious.

“I dabble in all sorts of things,” Vivian said happily, almost answering Sarah’s unspoken question, “Come summer you’ll have to see my microclimate field generator in action. I always have perfect weather for garden parties rain or shine.”

Sarah nodded slowly, having already decided that once she got off of the roof she was going to call a few of her old friends to look into this Vivian character.

“We can talk more once I make more coffee,” Vivian said excitedly, “Prudence isn’t much for talking and it’s so exciting to have a new neighbor who I can drink coffee with.”

Vivian looked pointedly at the killbot, which responded with another fax machine-like trill.


	2. Disadvantage Two: Birdwatching Drones

Good fences made good neighbors, or so the poem went, not that Sarah was fully certain of what kind of fence was best suited for a neighbor like Vivian. The background check she’d had her former coworkers run on the woman had turned up nothing. No acts of supervillainy had ever occurred in the area that couldn’t be pinned on an established villain and no one matching Vivian’s description had ever provided tech or support logistical support to any known evildoer.

Vivian was a mystery, as was the killbot she called Prudence.

As far as Sarah could tell she wasn’t anything more than an eccentric engineer, or maybe a roboticist with too much time on her hands, which would at least explain Prudence. From conversation she knew that Vivian worked part time at the pharmacy in town, was a member of the local hiking club and was generally well known and well-liked by everyone in the neighborhood.

Even the killbot she called Prudence was accepted by the locals, the popular assumption being that they were either a cyborg vigilante based on their efforts to clear out invasive weeds in the meadow behind the park, or a very, very advanced sort of robotic vacuum thanks to their organizing the yearly trash pickup along the greenbelt. It said a lot about how quiet a small town it was, that the people were willing to accept a killbot as just another neighbor.

It seemed that Vivian was a fairly standard mad scientist, albeit one with no ambitions past keeping the local homeowner’s association off of her back. Sarah had already run afoul of them after getting a dumpster delivered while she worked on pulling up the old flooring and properly refinishing the basement. What the previous owner had done was simply unbelievable, possibly an act of villainy rivaling any of Dr. Disaster’s schemes, putting down two layers of laminate flooring on top of linoleum over slightly battered, but perfectly good hardwood, but that was nothing compared to the response of the HOA.

After two weeks of being harassed over the phone and with unexpected in-person visits, Sarah was ready to pull a few strings and have them registered as a known villainous organization, just to see if that would help keep them off her property.

It wasn’t as though she was building another arbor in the backyard, like Prudence the killbot was, apparently planning on grapes to go with the rows of blueberry bushes along the fence. The killbot had brought over a pressure cooker and several jars of homemade preserves as a housewarming gift for Sarah, which spoke of additional hobbies the ‘bot possessed.

And if it wasn’t one thing it was another, as soon as she got rid of the dumpster the HOA was after her about the state of the fence in her backyard, which couldn’t even be seen from the street. Somehow they knew…

And as though offering an explanation a little drone drifted into her backyard.

Mad scientist neighbors and spy drones from the HOA, small town life certainly wasn’t like the big city and Sarah was no longer so sure if that was an entirely good thing.

She bent down to pick up a rock, wondering if she could play it off as an accident after throwing it at the drone when, after a series of soft beeps, a small speaker emerged from the drone’s underside.

“Stay down!”

Having been in enough action to follow such an order without question, Sarah dropped to her knees, looking frantically around for the source of danger that she was being warned about.

“Good, you don’t want to frighten them. Now look to the right.”

Sarah did as told, wondering who the drone belonged to. She typically avoided working with tech based heroes as her own solar powered magic tended to interfere with their gadgets, so she wasn’t up to speed on who was who, but the voice from the drone sounded very familiar.

“Where am I looking?” She whispered urgently.

“In the hawthorn tree!” The drone dipped and swayed in the air to emphasize where she was supposed to be looking, not that it helped.

“The what?” Living in the city meant that one tree was the same as any other to her. The only difference was that there were a few birds fluttering around the branches of one of the trees behind her yard, undisturbed by any danger she was supposed to be looking out for.

“Do you see them?” The voice asked urgently, recognizable, but not enough so for her to place.

Sarah squinted, wondering if the they she was looking for were invisible, “No.”

“Keep looking,” the drone bobbed up and down, “You don’t normally see cedar waxwings this time of year.”

All of those words made sense on their own, but strung together they were gibberish, until why the voice was so familiar finally sank in.

“Vivian?”

“Yes,” the mad scientist’s voice came from the drone, “I haven’t had much time to go outside lately with the project I’ve been working on, so I have the perimeter motion sensor set to pick up novel forms of avian life. Birdwatching is so relaxing, isn’t it?”

Sarah looked back and forth from birds to the drone, the meaning of what she’d just heard slowly beginning to sink in.

She didn’t know where the cedar part of their name came from, but the waxwing aspect was clear now that she knew what she was looking at. The birds were almost unnaturally smooth looking, their feathers slick and solid seeming and their colors almost too sharply defined. If not for seeing them with her own eyes she wouldn’t have believed they were real.

“I’ve seen them plenty of times before,” Vivian continued, “But cedar waxwings are a favorite of mine and seeing them this early was something I just had to share. It’s worth keeping an eye out on the standing deadwood behind your house by the way. At least once a summer I’ll see pileated woodpeckers back there.”

“Thanks,” Sarah said, trying and failing to sound sincere. As unusual as the birds were she would have preferred a less alarming way to have been informed of them.

Even better would have been advice on how to deal with the HOA, who never seemed to bother Vivian, no matter what she was up to. Her latest project had involved erecting several metal poles topped with what appeared to be polished aluminum beehives and never once had Sarah seen the HOA walking down her driveway.

“I’m going to go in for a closer look. Stop by after dinner if you want to see photos!”

The drone seemed to waver in the air and then vanished, undoubtedly hovering silently off to get a closer look at the birds.

Sarah still didn’t know what kind of fence was best to make Vivian a good neighbor, but she had the feeling that something tall, electrified and topped with barbed wire would help with the HOA.


	3. Disadvantage Three: Perpendicular Dimensional Invasions

Sarah was mowing the lawn, wishing that she’d gotten an earlier start given how hot it already was when a commotion erupted from next door.

Vivian was looking particularly disheveled as she ran out of the house and into the backyard, a sharp contrast to the methodical way that Prudence was watering the garden. Sarah had to give it to the killbot, the assortment of brightly colored flowers and neatly maintained rows of vegetables were very well maintained.

There was no reason to assume that there was anything out of the ordinary happening, but Sarah stopped the lawnmower just in case. After all, with Vivian things didn’t have to be out of the ordinary to be strange. Just last week she’d watched several of the hanging plants around Vivian’s back patio pull down the bug zapper she had hanging next to them and throw it off into the woods behind her house. For Vivian that was ordinary enough, which didn’t make it any less ominous. Especially since later that day she’d watched Prudence not so much prune, as threaten those plants with a laser.

Sarah watched as Vivian skidded to a halt to examine some of the flowers, “Ooh, was that a hummingbird hawkmoth?”

The killbot nodded slowly and hummed, pointing at a cluster of soft pink flowers.

“Those are new, aren’t they?”

The question earned her a sharper than average trill.

“I’m sorry,” Vivian shrugged, “You know I’m just not that interested in gardening. They’re lovely though. What did you say they were?”

The burst of static that followed was unintelligible, but somehow Vivian seemed to understand.

Frowning, she crossed her arms, “That’s an absolutely awful name! Why would anyone name a plant that?”

Prudence trilled and buzzed, gesturing emphatically at the plant and the rapidly moving little bug fluttering through the garden.

“It’s still a terrible name for a flower, especially one that smells like cotton candy,” Vivian shrugged, “But if the gremilrats eat them that’s two birds with one stone.”

“The what?” Sarah asked at the same time Prudence let out a sound like an angry fax machine.

“Oh, right, that’s what I’d come out to warn you about,” Vivian laughed, “The dimensional resonance unifier I’ve been working on kicked on after a power surge last night. Nothing big came through, at least nothing bigger than the gremilrats.”

Sarah stared at her.

Mistaking her confusion for interest Vivian smiled, “I’ve been tinkering with resonances ever since the overlay with the shadow dimension and last night everything must have fallen into place.”

“You’re… trying to open a portal to a parallel dimension?” Sarah had long ago dismissed Vivian as eccentric, but harmless, but opening portals to other dimensions was definitely villainy, especially to the shadow dimension, which was used as a prison by several extraterrestrial law enforcement organizations.

“Not a parallel dimension,” Vivian said dismissively, “They never touch so you have to find them and then build something to bridge the gap. The little reactor I have in my basement can only manage enough power to tap into perpendicular dimensions. If you look hard enough for points where it happens they at least cross with ours. Parallel dimensions you need to make the contact point yourself and that takes a lot of power.”

As she spoke she gestured emphatically, trying to illustrate the differences in dimension types with her hands.

Prudence buzzed.

“Right,” Vivian rolled her eyes, “I was getting to that. Until last night all I’d done was exchange data with the beings there. It’s like having a pen pal crossed with a bear crossed with a squid. The inhabitants of the particular dimension I found are fascinating. My plan had been to send one of my birding drones through as soon as I could manage a stable connection. Except last night something must have happened and the portal opened spontaneously. Long story short my basement ended up infested.”

Several slots opened on Prudence’s armor plating revealing an array of weaponry. Reprogrammed or not, the killbot was still fully equipped and clearly meant to put their weapons to good use if they needed to.

“Oh don’t be dramatic,” Vivian rested her hand on the killbot’s arm, right between a laser gun and a pruning knife, “I’m just going down the road to the Guzmans’ to borrow a few of those humane traps. They had that problem with woodchucks last year and the gremilrats are about the same size as long as they keep their wings folded.”

Prudence didn’t have eyes, just several omnidirectional sensor arrays, so the killbot didn’t exactly exchange a look with Sarah, but it was clear that every new bit of information about the gremilrats left them increasingly displeased.

“Just keep the doors closed and it’ll be fine,” Vivian said, her expression growing distant as she walked around the side yard, “They’ve got wings though so I wonder if I could count that as a bird sighting. Their being in the basement is incidental so it’s not like they’re captive or anything… Yes, I think that’s good enough for the blog…”

Vivian continued monologing to herself, occasionally shaking her fist in the air at an imagined detractor, as she disappeared around to the front yard, sounding very much like several of the supervillains that Sarah had dealt with during her career, if those villains had been more concerned about showing people up on the internet and writing blog posts than global domination and unmasking the costumed heroes that worked diligently to stop them.

Prudence exchanged another look with her, then turned to the sliding glass door, seeming to ponder what might lay beyond in the house they shared with Vivian. Prudence shook their head and went back to watering the flowers. Clearly there were some things that not even killbots wanted to deal with.

Gremilrats.

Sarah shuddered and went back to mowing the lawn, watching the ground in front of her for any signs of movement. She hadn’t even though to ask what gremilrats looked like…

Knowing that they had wings was enough.

More than enough, Sarah decided after the shadow of a hawk flying overhead made her jump.

At least she thought it was a hawk.

Gremilrats though.

A quick glance over at Prudence made it clear that the killbot felt the same way, head swiveling, laser gun out as they scanned their garden for any threats.


	4. Disadvantage Four: Killer Tomatoes

In a final effort to make the homeowners association stop nagging her about the back fence Sarah had decided to paint it. She hadn’t wanted to repaint the thing, in fact she would have loved to tear it all down, but because it was shared on one side with Vivian and Prudence, she’d need their permission to do anything about it.

Given that Prudence had vines growing over it and into her property, something that didn’t seem to bother the HOA despite their strictly enforcing property lines at all other times, Sarah had a feeling that it wouldn’t be worth it to ask Prudence’s opinions on getting rid of the fence.

The last thing she needed to do was pick a fight with a killbot over honeysuckle.

It wasn’t just honeysuckle that hung over the fence though. There was a number of other flowers and a few vines that she suspected were squash of some sort, possibly pumpkins judging by the size of them. Some of them even had fruit hanging from them already, deep red fruit that she hadn’t noticed the last time she was out, not that she paid too much attention to Prudence’s gardening. Prudence was as harmless as it was possible for a killbot to be and for the sake of her peace of mind Sarah tried to ignore them as best as she could.

The new plants though, they were harder to ignore, especially because now that she’d noticed them Sarah wasn’t sure if they were a new planting or not. She didn’t think there’d been anything along the stretch of fence where they were, much closer to the back of the yard than anything Prudence usually planted, or at least any vegetables, and these looked like some kind of vegetable.

In fact, if she didn’t know any better Sarah would have said they were tomatoes, except she already knew where Prudence’s tomatoes were supposed to be. Last week, when she’d been invited over for a cookout, Vivian had, at Prudence’s insistence, given her a grand tour of the garden and the tomatoes were at the corner of the yard farthest from her, right next to the zucchini.

Except when Sarah looked over the fence there was an empty patch of dirt where the tomatoes should have bene.

The simplest explanation was that Prudence had decided to rearrange things, except for what happened as Sarah watched a squirrel walking along the top of the fence got too close to one of the tomato plants. It sniffed at the plant and as Sarah watched one of the branches bent back and launched a tomato at it like a catapult.

Tempting as it was to go over and say something, Sarah decided that discretion being the better part of valor and to just let the tomatoes be. Besides, if someone from the HOA wanted to come by and complain about the fence there was always the chance they might get too close to the tomato plant and that was something that she would happily stand back and watch.

Making a point of keeping as far from the tomatoes as possible, Sarah continued painting.

As the sun moved across the sky the plants moved as well.

Around noon Sarah decided that it was as good a time as any to stop and get herself a glass of lemonade. The tomatoes might have had a similar idea, because they’d started to creep back across the yard and up onto the back porch.

It took the plant several minutes to wrap its branches around the door handle and pull it open, but it managed and slid inside.

Several minutes later it reemerged, chased by Vivian.

Shooing the plant back to its place in the garden, Vivian walked a lap of the yard, noting all of the splattered tomatoes scattered across it.

“It’s been doing that all morning,” Sarah commented, feeling that she should at least say something. Tomatoes were one thing, but if the pumpkins started doing the same they could put a hurting on someone, “It really doesn’t like squirrels.”

“That’s good,” Vivian said happily, “Prudence was so upset about what Norris did to her acorn squash last year I decided to get proactive so we don’t end up with a repeat. A little genetic engineering and I managed to produce a crop of guard tomatoes. They taste terrible, unfortunately, and the seeds don’t germinate very well, so I probably won’t do this every year, but it’ll be worth it if we can keep Norris out of the yard.”

Sarah frowned, trying to figure out who Norris was, not a member of the HOA as far as she could tell, and she knew for a fact that the busybody who lived down the street was called Janet, as her other neighbors had warned her about the woman.

On the other hand, if the mysterious Norris was a prowler of some sort Sarah felt like she should at least try to help with that. Retired or not, she still wanted to protect her neighborhood, or warn Norris if they were an innocent who’d managed to get on Vivian’s bad side. After all, maybe Vivian just really, really hated boy scouts trying to sell her cookies, or popcorn, or whatever it was that boy scouts sold. Vivian claimed that he’d gone after Prudence’s acorn squash though, so at the very least he’d been trespassing.

“Who’s Norris?” Sarah asked. The answer she got would decide whether this was something she could handle herself or if she’d need to get some active duty heroes involved.

“That’s the nickname we gave the woodchuck that lives in the woods behind our house. I’m surprised you haven’t seen him,” Vivian said calmly, as though there was nothing whatsoever odd about what she’d just said.

“You named a woodchuck Norris?” Sarah said slowly, in the process learning something about her neighbors’ sense of humor.

Next she’d have to learn what a woodchuck was just to be on the lookout for the thing, because while she was aware of them as a concept, she had no idea what they actually were. Harmless, she was sure, but knowing the difference between one of them and a skunk would be important as she already knew that there was a family of those that roamed the neighborhood.

Suburban life was very different than being a hero.


	5. Disadvantage Five: Moleman Uprisings

Coming back from her early morning jog Sarah caught sight of a strange, hunched figure rummaging around in Vivian’s garage.

In the misty, predawn light it was hard to make out much about them, other than they clearly didn’t belong there.

Peaceful as the neighborhood was, Sarah wasn’t naïve. Vivian and Prudence were both out of town, having told her as much. Something about a family reunion down by the lake, but Sarah had been more interested in what Vivian was loading into her car than the details of what she was talking about. Several drones, including one which looked it was designed for underwater operation, which matched the idea of going to a lake, numerous coolers with unknown contents, and a whole case of wine, placed on the back seat with great care by Prudence. Given that killbots didn’t drink and cheap, grocery store white wine wasn’t the sort of thing that super villains toasted their victories with, it was very unlikely that the two of them were out to engage in anything more criminal than playing loud music late at night, or maybe setting off fireworks.

On the other hand, someone snooping around Vivian’s property when she was away was definitely up to no good. They could have been a local kid playing some sort of prank, in which case they were in danger. Sarah hadn’t seen Vivian’s security system in action, but she doubted that the little, hand written blue and white sign on the front yard proclaiming that the yard was protected by ‘Sonic Deterrence Systems and Electro-drones’ was just there for show.

If they weren’t a kid, they could easily be an actual criminal, and while Vivian seemed harmless enough, the kind of tech she created wasn’t. In the wrong hands there was no telling the harm that could be done by the little robot that she created to get the possums out of the roof. All it took was a little creative thinking and Sarah had met plenty of clever and resourceful criminals in her days as the Solar Knight.

Of course, said sonic deterrence system was the reason that Sarah stood back and watched. If they seemed like a mundane criminal she’d call the police, if they seemed something more dire, well, she still had plenty of friends in her contacts list who could deal with that sort of thing. Just last week the Super Sonic Speedster had dropped in unexpectedly for lunch on one of their patrols. They claimed to have been nearby, but given how fast they could run and that their powers defied the laws of physics, anywhere on Earth was arguably ‘nearby’ for them. It have been a nice enough way to pass the afternoon, catching up on the antics of old friends that hadn’t made it to the evening news.

It was also reassuring to know that, if trouble ever came to her new home, she had friends who would be there in seconds if the need arose.

This didn’t seem like a situation that would call for that though, especially not when the mysterious intruder emerged from the garage with nothing more than an old fashioned lawnmower, the kind that looked like a cage of blades that you pushed along the lawn.

Catching sight of Sarah they straightened up slightly, “You must be Sarah, Vivian’s told me all about you.”

He shuffled forward and held out an overly large, clawed hand for her to shake.

She took his hand, gingerly. Whatever he was, and she had her suspicions, he wasn’t the first nonhuman, or individual with powers that made them seem so, that she’d met, “Pleased to meet you. And I hope you don’t mind me asking, what are you doing here?”

“Mowing the lawn for Vivian and Prudence while they’re away,” he said as if that was the most self-explanatory thing ever, though given that he had a lawnmower it might have been, “I wasn’t expecting anyone to be out this late. Or early. I’m not used to surface time.”

If the claws and bad posture didn’t give it away that certainly did. He was a Moleman, but what was he doing on the surface?

Other than mowing the lawn for Vivian.

“Normally I just maintain the geothermal power plant for her, but with her heading out of town for the week I figured the least I could do was keep the homeowners association happy by trimming the grass. I’m not sure if the power plant is deep enough down to count as an outbuilding or how far down the property lines extend and what the HOA doesn’t know won’t hurt us,” he said conversationally, “She originally had all of her landscaping equipment automated, but then the mower got into a fight with Prudence and that didn’t end well,” the Moleman shuddered at the memory, “So I help out where I can. It’s the neighborly thing to do.”

People were very big on being neighborly, much more so than Sarah was used to from the city. Here everyone seemed to know everyone’s business, which gave her a new found understanding of why most people who went on to be heroes left their hometowns first. It wouldn’t do have your secret identity ruined the first time you went out and stopped a bank robbery by having a teller thank you by name. That attitude made her feel less awkward about what she felt compelled to ask.

“Where exactly do you live?” Because she was pretty sure that she’d have known if there were Molemen in this town. After their attempt at global conquest they weren’t exactly popular and even if the locals could look past a killbot, Sarah felt like a Moleman was a bit harder to ignore. Their grandiose excavation projects tended to be disruptive, especially when they started them beneath cities.

“My wife and I are renting the little apartment below the garage,” he said proudly, “This neighborhood is in a good school district and we want the kids to get a good education when they’re old enough.”

“That’s…good,” Sarah said not sure how she felt about the situation of not just a Moleman, but a whole Molefamily living next door to her. Yes, they weren’t all bad, Ortrun Ironclaw, the exiled prince had been working as a hero since shortly after they’d first emerged, but it was clear that he was very much an exception. She’d never worked with him herself, but she’d known plenty of people who had and they had mostly good things to say about him, “Have a nice day.”

“Day?” the Moleman looked around, startled, “Oh it’s later than I thought! I’ll need to get a move on it if I want to be done before the sun comes up. I burn so bad and my wife won’t let me wear the exosuit for yard work, says it makes too much noise.”

Humming off key to himself the Moleman began to mow the lawn.

Watching him Sarah decided that it might be best to pretend that she hadn’t seen anything. If a Moleman wanted a better life for his Molefamily then who was she to judge?


	6. Advantage: Help with Car Troubles

Sarah was in a hurry. Ricochet had called and asked for her help, something about dimensional portals opening in orbit around the Earth and imminent alien invasion. It explained the odd greenish color to the sky that morning and the flickering lights above the clouds. A threat like that was an all hands on deck kind of situation and, despite her retirement, she was expected to at least show up and help.

She would have been on the road already if not for the slow leak in her right rear tire finally reaching the point where it had gone flat over night. Prudence, who’d been doing some early morning gardening had come over to offer a hand despite Sarah insisting she could manage fine on her own. It wasn’t as though she’d never replaced a flat tire before and Sarah didn’t know if the killbot’s skills extended into automotive repair.

The killbot was helpful though, having just the right attachments to loosen a stuck lug nut and inhuman strength and patience, enabling them to complete the job without breaking into profanity upon discovering that the spare tire was also flat.

While Sarah was calling a local mechanic and wondering if there was a way to, inconspicuously, have one of the active heroes in the area pick her up, Prudence went inside and emerged several minutes later with tool box worthy of a mad scientist.

Vivian was right behind her, clad in a bathrobe and carrying a steaming mug of coffee.

“Don’t worry,” Vivian said, offering her the coffee, “If you don’t care about looks I can have you on the road in half an hour.”

Sarah put away her phone with a sigh. Half an hour was better than anything a mechanic could have managed, though the sight of Prudence pulling out what looked like a set of tank treads that started to slither away on their own when the killbot put them down out wasn’t all that reassuring.

“Not that it’s a good time to start a trip,” Vivian added, as she pointed what looked like a garage door opener at the runaway treads. They froze in place and Vivian nodded approvingly, “They’re not exactly a perpetual motion machine, but in theory they’ll improve your gas mileage.”

“Thanks,” Sarah continued to eye the treads suspiciously. A few of her coworkers had some crazy vehicles they got around in, but only when they were in costume and she didn’t like the idea of Vivian modifying her car into something that might not be street legal. You could get away with driving a tank down the highway if you had your costume on, but doing it in civilian clothing was a good way to get pulled over. She wondered if she should say something, but a possible alien invasion seemed like enough of a reason to hold her tongue.

“Is this something you can put off?” Vivian asked absentmindedly, gathering her bathrobe to crouch down next to Prudence and point to something on the underside of the car. The killbot buzzed, pointed at something else and then went back to doing what they were doing, “There’s a lot going on and I don’t know if it’s a good idea to be on the road.”

Vivian looked upwards at the exact moment when what appeared to be black lightning zig-zagged across the sky.

It was the kind of thing that anyone would notice and Sarah had to at least comment on it or come up with a good enough excuse to avoid suspicion.

“I’ve got a cousin who…” coming up with excuses for needing to be at a specific place at a specific time had always been one of the hardest parts of maintaining her secret identity, something that she’d hoped would stop being an issue once she retired. Add to that how perceptive Vivian could be and it became a very uncomfortable situation, “Treats everything like it’s the end of the world. I just got a call that her boyfriend left her. You know how that is.”

“I’ve got a brother like that, always calling and expecting me to get him out of whatever trouble he’s gotten himself into,” Vivian nodded sagely, “What kind of car does the ex drive? I can drop one of the defense satellites I’ve hacked onto it if that would help. Or your cousin, I could arrange for the Spaceforce’s Orbital Laser Defense Grid to have a malfunction and…”

She let the statement hang.

Discovering that Vivian had hacked multiple satellites as well as what was supposed to be a top secret orbital project was probably one of the less alarming parts of the day.

“You really don’t need to do that,” Sarah said, half to Vivian and half to Prudence as the killbot started to work on attaching some kind of framework to the bottom of her car.

“Are you sure?” Vivian asked hopefully, “With all that’s going on up there no one would ever notice. In fact, later this afternoon I’m going to be launching a few satellites of my own. I’ve been meaning to do it for months now and all this confusion will be the perfect cover, especially if a few of the ones already up there get knocked offline. If you’re back in time you can join us if you want. I was thinking of having a cookout for the neighborhood, letting some of the kids do the countdown and have a chance to press the button to launch one of my satellites. I figure it’s better and safer than fireworks. And would you look at that…”

Vivian trailed off as the sky darkened and a sharp line seemed to streak across it, widening into a hole as something on the other side began to emerge.

As high up as it was, Sarah couldn’t begin to guess the size of it, or even what it was, other than that it was enormous.

“Would you look at that!” Vivian laughed, as though the whole alien invasion was nothing more than a show put on for her amusement, “Prudence, you keep at it, I’m going inside to launch the helidrones! I’m sure that it’s got a force field, but if we can bypass it think about the technology we can get our hands on!”

Cackling to herself, Vivian hurried back to her house, only to glace around the side yard and freeze.

“Prudence! Norris is back and eating the squash!” Vivian looked around frantically for something to throw, “And the tomatoes are letting him do it!”

Letting out a screech like what Sarah imagined an enraged dialup modem would sound like, Prudence dropped the wrench they’d been holding. Panels on Prudence’s back and shoulders slid open revealing their typical alarming array of weapons and gardening implements as the killbot launched themselves over the fence to deal with the offending rodent, unfortunately landing too close to the tomato plants, which chose that moment to wake up and go on the offensive.

Ducking behind her car to avoid the flying fruits Sarah took out her phone to let Ricochet know that she’d be running late and have someone keep an eye out for unscheduled launches and any new satellites showing up in orbit.

She did her best to ignore the commotion from next door as she weighed the merits of calling a taxi versus seeing if there was anyone in the area who could pick her up.

“They’ve cross-pollinated with the gremilrats!” Vivian’s angry shout made the decision for her.

Sarah didn’t know if Vivian meant the tomatoes or the woodchucks, but either way it was an excuse for a superhero to be in the area.

“No, I didn’t know they could spit acid!” Vivian shouted angrily as laser fire crackled through the air.

It was definitely a job for a superhero.

Specifically one who wasn’t enjoying her retirement and had no desire to know what a gremilrat was.


End file.
